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Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker is a snooker game developed originally released for IBM PC, Amiga and Atari ST computers in 1991. It was ported to the the Sega Mega Drive three years later exclusively for Europe and Australia.

Contents

Gameplay

Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker is one of the earliest attempts at rendering a billiards game in 3D, and is very simplistic in design. The camera is positioned behind the cue ball, and will rotate and pan while the balls are moving to give a wider perspective of the table. While the table itself is constructed out of flat-shaded 3D polygons, no backgrounds (or humans) are rendered.

If the player doesn't do anything for a period of time, the balls will come to life and pull faces. Despite the name, Jimmy White does not appear in the game in any form.

Versions

On the Mega Drive, Whirlwind Snooker operates at a lower frame rate and resolution than its computer counterparts, but is otherwise largely the same. This means there is no in-game music and a limited array of sound effects (though are still typically of higher quality than the IBM PC version, which relied on the internal one-channel PC speaker).

The game was built to take advantage of computer mice, and while the game is playable with a standard control pad, it is best experienced with the Sega Mouse.